All of the students will be writing short stories and novels. They will be having workshops and they will be talking earnestly about plots, characters, and things of this nature.

You will be able to tell that they believe that they can make a living this way when they graduate from college. They will express to you, if you ask them, how they want to do this more than anything else.

The Truth About Writing Fiction

The truth, though, is that it can be difficult to make a living from writing fiction. Those short stories that you wrote while you were in college may only bring in ten dollars, if you are paid for them at all. You may have trouble publishing them even if you do not want to make a cent. The novel that you wrote will also be hard to get published.

You first have to find an agent and then a publishing company. After the document is completed, you need to get it in the stores and you need to raise awareness among potential buyers so that they will want to purchase it. This is a long process, and those who are successful did not get that way at the very beginning.

Monetizing Short Stories

There are other ways to make money with your stories, though. As mentioned, you can sometimes get them published for a small payment. Little online magazines will buy them up and print them. When you do this, the rights will often revert to you upon publication. This means that you can sell the same story over and over again. If you have a very good one, you could get a steady income off of it.

You must keep in mind that this is not a fast process, though. It could be six months or more before you get your money and before the rights come back to you. Even if you can sell a story for one hundred dollars, doing so twice a year will not pay the bills.

Self Publishing

Another option is to publish the work yourself. If you have a number of short stories, you can put them all together into a collection. If you have a novel, you can edit it and publish it yourself.

There are online publishers that will allow you to make physical or digital copies for no charge. You just have a pay them a percentage each time that you sell a book.

The promotion will be up to you, but this is one way to get your books into print.

Blogging Your Short Stories

You may also be able to start a blog where you put up a new chapter each week. This is similar to how writers such as Charles Dickens would put their stories in newspapers. You will have readers who will come back each week to read the next installment.

Once you have enough people, you can sell ad space. You may be offering the story for free, but you will generate money with the ads. This is a good situation because the readers feel like the book is free and you still can get paid.

Share the information to your friends in college since it’s useful in giving them means of survival in campus.